Dealing with disappointment
by Pastor Fraser Pearce
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Then Eli answered, ‘Go in peace; the God of Israel grant the petition you have made to him.’ And she said, ‘Let your servant find favour in your sight’ (1 Samuel 1:17,18a).
Often our needs and disappointments in life can drive us to God in prayer.
This is how it was for Hannah. She dearly wanted to have a child but had none. When she and her husband went to Shiloh, the place where God had made himself present in his favour for his people, she cried out to him in her deep distress. She wanted God to notice her and pay attention to her misery. She was willing to offer her child back to God as his special servant if only God would give her a boy to love and care for.
At first, the priest Eli thought Hannah was drunk, seeing how she was praying. Sometimes our distress can lead us to act in ways that are hard for other people to understand. When Eli heard Hannah’s plight, he gave her God’s blessing, saying, ‘Go in peace; the God of Israel grant the petition you have made to him’.
Hannah listened to this word in trust and went back to live out the callings God gave her, including the calling with her husband Elkanah to live as a married couple. From trusting in God’s word and living faithfully in her calling, she became pregnant and had a son, Samuel, who would indeed be a great servant of God.
Do you have needs or even disappointments in life? God is not far from you. Call out to him in Jesus’ name, and he will hear you. Listen to the word he gives you in Christ Jesus – especially the word that, in him, you have life as a gift from God. Live your day-to-day life with the peace this word gives, and you will find that God will work his gifts in you in ways beyond human understanding.
Dear Father, please look at me and see the needs and disappointments I have in my life. Remember the great love you have shown me in Christ Jesus, and give me your Spirit so that your work of new life may be seen in my life. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Fraser Pearce is pastor at Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Flinders Street, Adelaide. He grew up in Sydney, where he attended St Mark’s Lutheran Church, Epping. He was ordained in 1997 and served at St Paul’s Box Hill, Victoria, and Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Bendigo, Victoria. Fraser has been married to his wife, Margaret, since 1995, and they have four children.
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